Victor of Mesukevi

Holy Martyr Victor of Mesukevi (of Georgia) was one of the seventeen Georgians of the company of Saint Sukhius, burned by pagans on the mountain Sukaketi in the second century.

Sukhius and his sixteen companions were great nobles at the court of the ruler of Caucasian Albania. Accompanying the ruler's daughter, Satenik, wife of the Armenian king Artaxias (88-123), they came to Artashat, the old capital of Armenia. There the Christian Greek Chrysos was preaching, enlightened and ordained priest by the holy Apostle Thaddeus. The nobles believed in the Savior and resolved to devote their lives to God. All seventeen followed Chrysos to Mesopotamia, where at baptism in the waters of the Euphrates they were found worthy to see the Lord of Glory. At the place of baptism they raised a venerable cross and named it the "Cross of the Annunciation". Chrysos gave them new names: the eldest received the name Sukhius (instead of Bagadras), and the others Andrew, Anastasius, Talale, Theodoritus, Ivkhirion, Jordan, Quadratus, Lucian, Mimnenos, Nerangios, Polyeuctus, James, Phocas, Domentian, Victor and Zosimas.

After the martyrdom of Chrysos, Sukhius became the guide of the brotherhood, which moved to the mountain Sukaketi, near the village of Bagrevandi, and lived there in strict asceticism, on mountain greens and spring water. The new ruler of pagan Albania, Datianos, learned of it and sent Barnabas with soldiers to bring them back to the court and to their former faith. They rejected all persuasion. By the order of Barnabas, Sukhius and his companions were nailed to the ground in the form of a cross and burned. In dying, Quadratus, and then the others, sang the 21st psalm. After the burning their bodies were cut up and scattered over the whole mountain Sukaketi, from which they take the name of martyrs "of Mesukevi". This took place in the year 123 (by other accounts 130; an Athonite manuscript of the eleventh century from the Iviron monastery gives the year 100). Their remains lay unburied and incorrupt until the fourth century, when local Christians placed them in coffins; the names of the saints were found written on the rock. Saint Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia built a church there and founded a monastery, and later a healing spring opened.

Saint Victor is commemorated on 28 April and, in the new style, on 22 November (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Alania.